hmm
i wonder what nationality Becky heralds from. would be better to get the correct beer/pastry for her day.
Or sticking to tradition (of the date for rebecca) could go with jewish beer/pastry…don’t know any though…

Two rather gross inaccuracies in her comment…
1) Patrick didn’t literally drive any snakes out of Ireland, he crushed the Celtic religion there which revered snakes (actually dragons).
2) Pretty sure the black plague didn’t start in Ireland, it started in southern Europe… but I might need to look that up.

Near Patrick’s time, a plague, likely the bubonic plague, the same as the Black Death, did reach Ireland (or at least Britain)–it arrived in the early 540s–but it came from the Near East to Constantinople, and then spread west. And it was called (in Britain) the “Yellow Plague”.

Legend has it that he studied in Gaul (modern France) after his period of slavery in Ireland and before he returned there to spread Christianity–he may have been given a good Roman name while he studied in the Empire. Or, like others (Saul/Paul), he may have had both a native language name and a Latin name.

History, I’m a history major it’s the only thing I’m good at. Lol. See, he was a spreader of the Christian faith. Long to short, when running into the Pagans of Ireland, a people already treated less than human by the English, his final attempt to rid the island of heathenism was to kill them.

Except that when St. Patrick was around–the 400s or so–there were no English, and the Christians in Britain were not doing much killing of pagans anywhere else. It was all they could do just to survive themselves.

Okay, poor wording, soon to be English. At the time they were an extension of the Roman Empire. Regardless, the inhabitants of Ireland were seen as barbarians, a view which continued after the fall of the Holy Roman Empire.

However, there was plenty of killing. It happens when religion is involved. On any side. Just as many Christian holidays were rearranged to coincide with Pagan holidays in order to avoid persecution. It does not however denote the fact that St Patrick “drove the snakes from Ireland”, resulting in an attempt at genocide.

Actually, it is the MO of almost all religions. When the winner in a clash of cultures takes over the land, the previous local “good” deities join any existing “evil” deities in the “new” religion, and their priests are vilified. Most “dark” deities started out as benevolent or chaotic neutral patrons of an earlier culture.

Not all of the old gods were demonized. Many of the old goddesses were married off if the old pantheon was replaced by a patriarchal god gang. And I’m pretty sure that some became saints as the church spread throughout Europe. A few might go in the other direction, given time. St. Nick is halfway there already.

Saint Nicholas is an interesting one. Nobody tells you that the guy who’s named as Santa Claus once smacked a bishop, for example. Yes, really; Nikolaus of Myra lost his temper at the Council of Nicea, when the debate between Arians and Homoousians got kind of heated. The evolution of our modern Santa Claus was a long one.

Patrick didn’t chase out pagan priests and priestesses to the degree modern Wiccans like to co-opt Irish history to claim. He also wasn’t the first Christian to set foot on the island as modern Christian folklorists like to claim, either.

Furthermore, Ireland never had snakes and also wasn’t affected by the Black Plague to anywhere NEAR the same degree as the European continent. So the line was cutely constructed but 100% pure-D wrong.

Finally, the story of Patrick driving *real* snakes out of Ireland was borrowed from the hagiography of St. Hilaire, a French saint credited with de-snakifying a section of France. And they meant real snakes for him, too. It was added to Patrick’s life story in the 10th century. The lie that the snakes symbolized pagans was born somewhere in the mists of time since that moment, carried forward because of the charming symbolism taking over reality, and latched onto by neopagans who desperately want a Satan figure and can’t find one without ripping off Irish history.

But he did try to chase them out and kill them. It is the celebration of an attempted genocide regardless. I’m not saying he actually succeeded nor that he was the first. He’s just the one we celebrate by decorating ourselves in green (because if you aren’t green, CATHOLIC, you’re pinched). It is what it is. It isn’t a matter of sensationalism. It’s a matter of fact. That’s it.

The dates for the “Black Plague” are a thousand years after the dates for St. Patrick. In fact, St. Pat is ancient enough to have lived and died before the Calendar Machine’s time reset began.

Patrick could not have “ushered in” the 14th Century Plague, but then Becky isn’t expected to have Google in her head upon a morning, either. The Dark Ages and the Middle Ages are all probably mediaeval mush to her like anybody else. And poor Tina, who ought to be able to remember all those times (with delight!) comes up blank, and lashes out.

Part of the reason I have poking at the Chronology over at the Wapsiwiki is to keep these facts straight.

The demon collective that is Tina chased Monica in front of the bus in Mexico. Considering their appearance was much more freaky-sinister than Monica’s own crew, you can imagine how terrified M must have been.

For this blatant transgression, the collective were bound to time, and therefore cut from their wider memory of various dimensions, including the past. Then without Tina 1.0 being alive anymore, they needed a Nudge to struggle on in her reconstructed body.

I suspect Tina is the type of person you could have ANY type of humor with and she would be okay with it so its possible Becky is giving her all in regards to the fact she will need to kerb her humor for the rest of the day…

She lost me too. I was just going to talk about other things, and hope no one noticed. Either there is some sort of joke/ double meaning that I’m not getting, or Tina is confused and missing the point.

Well, when Tina jokes about Becky being able to earn sainthood during the middle ages for her pastries, Becky says “ushering in the Black Plague” would get her the same thing. Tina says that their health care isn’t bad enough to allow a plague to run rampant. I think.

My father was an Ulster man, proud Protestant was he.
My mother was a Catholic girl. From county Cork was she.
They were married in two churches, lived happily enough,
Until the day that I was born. Then, things got rather tough.

Oh, it is the biggest mix-up that you have ever seen.
My father, he was Orange and me mother, she was green.

If grasshoppers were pastries, I would have been asaulted by baked goods getting across the parking lot today. All of a sudden: flit flit whirrrr flit whirrrrr SMACK! right between the eyes, above my eyeglass frames. Where did all this fishbait come from? Any other plains/midwest posters have a biblical swarm show up?

I think it would take many cold beers before I could try that.
With all my trips to Thailand, I haven’t succumbed to the need to eat a bug. Even though my best buddy, my friends 8 yo daughter, considers fried bees her favorite snack.

At work, my Dad eventually was the recipient of a box of chocolates that was making the rounds–IIRC, it had 6 or 12 chocolates, little square ones, of three types: ants, bees and grasshoppers. It was making the rounds as a gag, because nobody dared to eat it.

Then my Dad got it and brought it home. We knew what it was, and several of us agreed to try them. It was good, but somewhat crunchy.

Of course, the fact that the chocolates were little square things, and not insect-shaped did help.

I’m not saying we should all eat ourselves to obesity, but a morning pastry doesn’t normally do that if you balance it out. So if you don’t want a pastry, fine. But don’t judge others for eating them or providing them. It’s not gonna kill us. We don’t need it, but it doesn’t hurt. No matter how melodramatic you make it sound. 😉

Dakabn- Takes hand and guides him gently to a chair in the corner. Silently supplies beer and a selection of her goodies. walks to the couch and set down, shakes head and says, “you get used to it I’m afraid.”

St. Opus Day will be celebrated on the day I first died August 31st. It’s a rare person indeed that can celebrate their own death. I proclaim a day of drunken revelry with a ceremonial thumbing of the nose at Death at the moment of my reboot, 0119 hours CDT.

The drink of the day shall be either scotch or tequila. Please don’t mix the two as I can’t be responsible for your hangovers(sssss). 😉

Well I have this bottle of Cutty Sark I have been working on since I got it when I turned 21, and there are numerous bottles of Cuervo and Patron that have succumbed against me. As far as celebratory food goes, I have been an amateur baker for years so breads and pastries, and of course Cajun style beans and rice 🙂

Since a certain saint has come up, I feel it’s only right to tell the following story, which may be historical, or perhaps more hysterical.

Sometime after Patrick had driven the snakes out of Ireland, the Vikings descended on the Fair Isle and proceeded to cause no end of trouble for the local population. War, rape, pillage and plunder—and exporting the proceeds. Well, Patrick’s flock endured it as long as they could, but finally sent a delegation to the revered holy man to ask if he could not get the Vikings to leave, as he had exiled the snakes so successfully.
After considering the problem, the holy man prayed that all the Norse fish would spoil.
However, the Vikings just called it ludefisk, and ate it anyway.
The Irish returned to Patrick and asked him to try again. This time, he prayed that their potatoes would fall apart.
The Vikings just made lefse, and ate them anyway.
The Irish again came to Patrick and demanded he do something more effective.
Patrick swore in anger, saying, “I wish those foul Norskies would just all go to Hell!”